


Angeles

by ghuune



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Angst, Cockles, Cuddling, Heavy Drinking, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Vignettes, non-au, tinhat!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 05:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5816074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghuune/pseuds/ghuune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tinhat!verse! The story of Cockles, based on what is known and the excellent meta available. </p><p>Jensen Ackles released a song September 18, 2012, but why *that* song? The story of Misha Collins leaving Supernatural, and the ways Jensen found to deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angeles

**Author's Note:**

> This here is a tinhat!verse, y'all. I fell in love with these two miserable assholes four months ago and have spent an ridiculous amount of time since then reading meta, watching gifs, and theorizing with my good friends over at Tumblr as to just what the actual fuck is going on. The story's a result of all that Cockles-bingeing; it is canon-compliant (whatever the hell that means in RPF)--it stays in the real world. Tumblr!original, but apparently it doesn't suck so I was encouraged to schlep it over here.

I. SEPTEMBER 9th, 2011.  
Jensen didn't know why the song was stuck in his head, but when his silent Vancouver apartment yawned around him after a day on set, plucking it out on his guitar felt soothing. Naw, “soothing” was the wrong word. The silent apartment didn't yawn, it gaped, and it had teeth. The notes from his guitar were scraps he threw it so it didn't snap shut on him. 

He took a break from frigging up the F# for the sixth time to take a sip from a bottle of beer on the coffee table. His throat was sore from a day of growling out Dean. You'd think, Misha gone, he'd be able to lighten up the vocal register, gradually glide back to his old way of speaking, but at this point, the voice was part of the character. Plus, if he let the gravel go, it'd be like admitting Mish was never coming back.

The jaws of silence creaked, and he spilled a little of his beer in his haste to get his hands back on his guitar.

The earworm still gnawed at him as he drove back to set in the gray Vancouver predawn. His fingers tapped on his thighs, drilling the chords into his muscle memory, as he reclined in the makeup trailer. Jared was at the far end, his sharp features bathed in the incandescence shed from the multiple 100 watt bulbs. Kori, the makeup artist, dabbed concealer under his eyes. 

“Whatcha humming?” Jared asked. 

He twitched. “Didn't know I was humming,” he admitted. “What did it sound like?”

Jared, bless him, took that bait happily and started singing something about lime in the coconut, she drank it all up. “Naw,” he said, after playing out the joke, “it sounds familiar. Hum it a little louder?” Seeing Jensen about to refuse, he went on, “C'mon, it's going to drive me crazy if you don't. I know I've heard that song.”

Jensen didn't know the words, but he had tune for the bridge down cold, because it was breaking his knuckles trying to get it right. He sang it, easily managing the difficult minor key.

“Wait, wait, I know that song,” Jared said, with an intent hunting-dog-pointing-at-a-bird expression in his eyes. “Shit. What's that from?”

Jensen shrugged. “I dunno. I'm learning to play it, but it's kind of a bitch.”

“Play it for me sometime?”

“Sure, if I ever get it right.” Jensen flashed Jared a small smile so he'd stop worrying. Jared texted him about a thousand times a day after he got home, just little things like “Check out Channel 5” or funny pictures he found online. Just letting him know he was around, you know, if Jensen ever felt like talking about it.

Which Jensen did not.

II. AUGUST 3rd, 2011  
“Mish,” he said, trying to pry the bottle out of his hand. “Stop.”

“Fuck no,” Misha said, yanking away, “and fuck you.”

To say Misha was in a bad mood would be putting it lightly.

Misha wrapped his lips around the mouth of the bottle and upended it. His throat worked as he swallowed the raw liquor. Vodka, which Misha drank directly from the bottle as though it were water.

It didn't smell, Jensen thought, which was a good thing, because as it was, Misha was not going to be in any kind of shape to shoot his final episode with Supernatural tomorrow. It would be the height of unprofessionalism if he had an obvious hangover. At the same time, Misha no longer had to worry about the consequences of his actions. Mix in completely understandable depression, and you had a very drunk man dead set on getting drunker.

“What?” Misha demanded, pulling the bottle away from his lips. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“You're scaring me, man,” Jensen said, making another attempt at the bottle, but Misha held it out of his reach. Jensen contemplated the odds of getting it away from him without a wrestling match. Misha didn't have the greatest self-preservation instinct at the best of times, and tonight, drunk as he was, he'd resist until he made Jensen hurt him. The thought made him feel even more guilty and hollow and he just didn't need it, not on top of everything else. 

“You act like this is just happening to you,” he said. “I'm here, too. I'm involved.”

Misha shot him a slitted glare. “You lose your safety fuck when Jared isn't playing nice. Poor you!” he snapped. “I'm losing my ability to support my family. Sorry if I think my shit's a little more serious.”

Jensen ignored the first sentence. It was a running joke on set that he was fucking Jared, and not like he hadn't tried when they first started acting together, but Jared was straight. Good thing, too. Sex would have ruined a rare friendship. He missed out on a lover, but he gained a brother, and that was a precious thing.

Sitting right in front of him was—not a consolation prize from God, because first of all, God and gay sex didn't rub elbows comfortably in Jensen's head, and second of all, Misha was not a consolation prize—but. There Jensen's thought stopped, as it always did when he tried to define what Misha was to him. He shook it off, stowed his crap, as Dean would say—whatever the hell Misha was to him, he was gonna be a dead undefinable relationship if he didn't let up. 

“Give me that bottle,” he said, pitching his voice low and making serious eye contact. That was usually enough to get Misha to do whatever he wanted, and he manipulated freely. This was an emergency.

“Jen, I said no,” Misha said, and his hard, angry expression finally cracked into fear and loss so toxic that Jensen shrank back against the sofa cushions, instinctively guarding himself against it.

Misha grinned, bitter as gall, as though some private thought had been confirmed, and toasted it with another long suckle at the neck of the vodka bottle. He wasn't above doing suggestive things with his lips and tongue in the process, but Jensen was too grieved and horrified to respond. 

“You mean it,” he said, his voice breaking. “This is how you're going to handle this?”

He rocketed to his feet. “Then have it, you child,” he said, his voice hard. “Go ahead and hide. Call's for 1330.”

“Fuck call,” Misha said. “Darren,” he meant his body double, “can film my scenes. No one will miss me.”

Jensen had his back to Misha by then, but that made him flinch. Slow, his body unwilling to obey him, he turned back to watch Misha drain the last of the vodka in the bottle. That had been full when he entered less than an hour ago. _Jesus Christ_ —which wasn't a blasphemy as he thought it, but a prayer. _Watch over him._

“I'll miss you.”

“You'll miss getting sucked off,” Misha said, angry, crude. His eyes were still clear and focused in spite of the infusion of forty percent alcohol he'd just administered. “Hell, it's Supernatural. Maybe my ghost will pop in for a few episodes. I'll drop by your trailer. Keep hope alive.”

Jensen crossed the few feet separating them. He knelt in front of the recliner and let his hand rest on Misha's shin. A ridge of warm bone pressed into his palm, and he felt the beat of the other man's blood beneath the denim. Misha regarded him, a complicated expression on his face. 

“I scared you, Jen? I'm scaring myself,” he said, his voice thick. “What if we lose our home?”

Jensen's face twisted as he damn near started crying himself. He dipped his head, even though Misha never cared if he cried, but first of all, this wasn't about him, as Misha had pointed out. And second of all, _damn_ it. Of course Misha would be freaking out about _that._

“I built that house,” Misha went on, life draining from his voice as the alcohol finally began its numbing work. “I love taking West to the grocery store.”

Jensen sniffed a tiny laugh through his nose. Those vids of his. West, who'd never gone hungry a day in his life; Misha, smiling, proud. But the image also hurt him, because he was selfish, because he came from country clubs and dinner at eight while this man came from the backseats of parked cars with clothing on the windows to block the light. He cared for Misha, but he'd never really get where all this angry fear came from, and deep down, he was glad he never would. So there was that. 

“Mish, you did a hell of a job for us. There'll be others. You've got fans. Everyone knows you're talented--”

“Bullshit,” he lashed out. “The real world, Jensen, maybe take a look at it. People lose their jobs, their homes, all the time. This show doesn't mean a thing to LA. Jen. _Jen._ The fuck am I gonna do?”

Jensen clawed his way up Misha's legs then, draped himself over his lap and pulled his head down against his chest. Misha opened his mouth in a silent scream, his teeth scraping the fabric of his shirt, his hot, wet breath dampening the cloth. Coiled deep in the pit of Jensen's stomach was his own insignificance, his own shallowness. Here he was, craving comfort because he'd miss having this man beneath him, above him, around him, while Misha was terrified he'd fail his family. Jensen was an asshole. But he knew that about himself already.

“You're gonna make it,” he said, pressing the words into Misha's scalp. Beneath the vague, potatoey scent of vodka was Misha's own smell, and he inhaled it sharply, wishing hard that this was not happening. He wished for something to blame, something towards which to direct his sudden, helpless anger, but there was nothing. Sera Gamble wanted to take the show back to the realms where the Impala could go. That meant every angel out of the pool. It wasn't his place to judge the decision. All he cared about right now was Misha, grieving, tears wetting his shirt. 

Even more desperately and sadly, he wished he could tell Misha he loved him, because the man needed to hear it. But that was not something he could say unless he were one hundred percent certain, and he wasn't. 

“Come on,” he said, pressing a rough kiss against Misha's head in lieu of those unsaid words. “Time for bed.”

The look Misha gave him froze him from throat to balls.

“Really?” he said. “That is so fucking low---”

Jensen ignored him as he gently pulled him up off the recliner. Misha's flexible body was rendered even more boneless and loose by booze. “It's not what you think, numbnuts,” he said. “Gotta keep you on your side. It won't be long before you start vomiting, and I'll be damned if you choke on my watch.”

“Wouldn't be the first time.”

Jensen cracked his first smile of the evening as he looped Misha's arm over his neck and propped him up, dead weight on his hip and arm. 

He dumped him on the bed, put a mixing bowl—the best thing he could find—under his nose, and then stretched himself out behind him, pulled him back against his body, playing big spoon. Not only was it the Emmy-award winning cuddle position of choice, but it was also the easiest way to keep Misha from rolling over to suffocate in his pillow. An entire bottle of vodka in under an hour. God alone knew how he'd even kept that down. 

“I'll be impressed if you're able to move tomorrow,” Jensen rumbled against his ear. Misha whined a little and pressed back against him, and God help him, he was excited by the tight curve of Misha's ass against his groin. He really was low. He shook his head at himself and pulled back, keeping his lips from the dangerous spots around Misha's ears, the sides and back of Misha's neck. He knew all Misha's dangerous spots, and tomorrow would be the last time he'd see them. 

Misha was still awake, but he was lost inside his drunk, leaving Jensen adrift and alone with his own terrible sense of loss. 

III. SEPTEMBER 22, 2011  
Jensen got better at the song—turned out its name was “Angeles”--once it finally occurred to him to YouTube the music video. The burnout staring out at him through the screen sang in a voice as light and whispery as cobwebs. Jensen liked the rough, homemade look of the video, the “I'm too depressed to give a damn” quality of the singing, all backed by powerful, certain guitar playing, like the guy was saying, _yeah, I'm knocked down right now, but listen, I still got some steel. Watch me. I got this._

He looked up the music and practiced.

One night, he surprised himself crooning, “I could make you satisified in everything you do/All your secret wishes could right now be coming true...”

He flubbed the chord, recovered, kept singing. If he knew the words, he knew the words, and so what if his voice was a little weak? It wasn't like Smith belted it out either. 

“Spend forever with my poison arms round you/No one's gonna fool around with us...”

Jensen put a little diaphragmatic support into his singing. His playing suffered, but there was something compelling about this lyric. It felt right, like something he wanted to say. 

“So glad to meet you, Angeles.”

Then he winced, set aside the guitar. Put his forehead in his hands. Why? Seriously. Why was he thinking about Misha? Again.

Misha wasn't answering his calls or his texts. He _was_ talking to Danneel, which was even more awful, because Danneel only passed on the facts: Misha got back to California okay, Misha was confirmed for the next set of conventions, Misha says “hi”--but wild horses wouldn't drag Misha's confidences from her. How he was feeling. How he was doing. One of the things Jensen loved about his wife was how she kept her best friends' secrets, but, you know, there are best friends and then there's your husband. He should have slipped a “tell me everything” subclause into their vows, except that wouldn't have worked, and he knew it. When he spoke to Dani, she was gentle, she was supportive, and she was Switzerland. Not a single hint passed her lips of what Misha suffered.

If he even did suffer. Knowing Misha, he'd probably disappeared inside some project with nary a ripple on the surface to show where he'd been. Misha would move on. But Dani wouldn't even say something as simple as, “He's doing okay.” What a hell of a position for her to be in, anyway. Misha was one of her best friends. He couldn't deprive her of that...

He couldn't spend all night like this.

Jensen raked his hands through his hair and snatched up his phone to call Jared. 

“Can you come over?” 

“Sure,” Jared said, after a pause which Jensen knew was him eye-talking with Gen. “You got beer?”

“Get a job.”

Jared laughed. “Give me one,” he crooned in mock seduction. 

“Ask your wife,” Jensen growled.

“I'll be there in fifteen,” Jared said, laughing. 

Jared turned up with a case of beer and a duffel bag with a change of clothes. A few DVDs were cradled in the slack between the bag's straps, as though Jared had thrown them on top on his way out the door, which he probably had.

“What is this, a slumber party?” Jensen asked.

“I mean for you--” Jared pointed at him, “--to get through all this,” and he raised the case of beer easily, the big veins standing out on his arm. 

“You gonna take advantage of me?” Jensen asked, letting him in.

“I brought the Sharpies,” Jared said, moving into the kitchen. Beer bottles clanked as he put them in the fridge. “Put in one of the DVDs,” he called out. 

Jensen looked through the selection. A few bangs-and-bad-jokes action movies, a Clint Eastwood (not one of the better ones, but Jared wasn't spoiled for choice), and Jared's own favorite movie, “Good Will Hunting.” Jensen hovered over Clint before he selected “Good Will” and slid it into the DVD player. Jared was here so he didn't spend the whole damned night ticking like a moth against the edges of his bell jar. He didn't care what he watched so long as he wasn't alone, and Jared was always down for a viewing of “Good Will.”

He settled back on the sofa as Jared reentered the living room, carrying four open beers between the long fingers of his big hands. He zigzagged his impossible frame across the couch, his feet intruding in Jensen's space, his leg warm against his.

Years ago, this closeness would have driven Jensen insane. Jared, smoking hot with his rangy body and enormous smile, had sent jolts of awareness up his spine and across his skin to the point where he'd lost sleep over it. But, thankfully, that turned out to be just a passing crush. Soon after Jensen helped nurse him through his first breakdown, he'd seen him on set and thought “my brother,” and meant it, and the relief he'd found in that was enormous. 

“Hey, I was hoping you'd pick that!” Jared passed him one of the open beers. “Bottoms up,” he said, “these are all for you.”

“Seriously,” Jensen deadpanned.

“One of us has to drive to set tomorrow.”

“Dude. I have scenes.”

“You always have scenes. Relax! Dean's a drunk this season anyway. Somebody gives you shit about it? Tell 'em it's Method.”

Jensen shrugged, accepting that logic, and took a pull at the bottle as South Boston appeared on the screen.

The movie followed the underachieving tortured genius, Will, his best friend Chuckie a constant presence by his side. Will screwed around, getting into fights, met a few father figures, found the best of the bunch—a man who'd been wounded by his life worse than Will had been wounded by his—and became his friend. Then Will met Skylar, charmed her, dated her. Skylar was just “the Girl.” There was no real reason she should become so important to Will, except that she did. Will swaggered and played it off and ignored it, but she inspired him, made him vulnerable. He started to feel pain he'd been ignoring for years, because he wanted to share it with her, wanted her to understand him, even as the very idea paralyzed him with fear.

Jensen, now on his fifth beer, leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, to watch as Skylar tried to get through to Will. This was the crisis. The camera, loose and hectic, reflected Will's state of mind. The set was claustrophobically small, the colors, mud brown and dirty, illustrated his panic. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the screenwriters, had gone with the old “abusive past” excuse for Will's dysfunction, but Matt did the best he could with the material he'd provided himself, and Jensen believed it. Given what he played on the screen, he was kinda obligated to.

Anyway, Will didn't come through the crisis intact and whole. Instead, he broke Skylar's heart and sent her packing. A mercifully brief, but intense, montage of Will pining for her while trying to move on with his life began to play, backed by familiar chords.

Jensen sat up straight. “No way.”

“What?” Jared said, interrupting himself mid-monologue; throughout the whole movie he'd provided running commentary on the script, the acting, trivia, random anecdotes, and his mancrush on Matt Damon. 

“Pause it,” Jensen said, grabbing his guitar. He played the opening of the song, raising his eyebrow at Jared.

“The song you've been practicing's in this movie?” Jared didn't pretend Jensen shared his passion for this story. Jensen liked “Good Will Hunting” well enough, but he'd only seen it fifty million times because Jared had made him watch it that much.

Jared grinned. “Awww, you love me.”

“Yeah, but I'm not pining for you. You're right there.”

Then Jared looked down and away. He reached for one of the open bottles of beer on the coffee table (he kept bringing them in as Jensen kept finishing them, racking his brother up), and took a long pull from it. Slowly, he said, “So this's gotta be about Misha.”

Jared's shoulders were hunched, and he didn't meet Jensen's eyes. He was uncomfortable talking about this, like that was a surprise. When Jensen first started up with Misha, Jared gave him a “what the hell” speech that covered Danneel, the Show, the fans, and, possibly, the political situation in the Middle East. Frankly, Jensen had been too lost in euphoria to give much of a damn. Jared had eventually adjusted, to the point of even running interference when they forgot themselves in public, but he never fully “got” it. He liked Misha well enough, but he didn't love him. Not as a brother, not even as a friend. Misha was just some weird guy he had to work with, one he had a good time tormenting, but someone he could do without.

It was the only schism in their otherwise perfect accord.

“Yeah, this is about Misha.” Jensen drained his beer and reached for another. He swallowed half of it. He was drinking too much; he wasn't much for booze, not like Dean, anyway, and this was his sixth beer in less than two hours. He was going to wind up giving a fourth-wall-breaking performance tomorrow at this rate.

But he had to own it. The song he'd had stuck in his head was the backdrop of a scene in “Good Will Hunting” that, too accurately, reflected his own life right now. His subconscious, or whatever energetic forces ruled the universe, had conspired to bring it to his attention.

“I miss him,” he said, and Jared looked at him then with open acceptance in his hazel eyes—the expression Jensen had needed, more than anything, to see.

Jared grabbed himself another beer. 

They began to talk.

IV. JULY 7th, 2012  
Jared set the anchor as Jensen turned off the motor. The buildings onshore had blurry edges through the haze, as though God had had a buzz on when he made the air.

Jensen, on his back with his guitar on his chest, stared up at the clouds. They were dense white and seemed close enough to touch. Misha would make some joke about sheep that'd have him in stitches. Jared was quiet, serious, arranging himself so the swells of the waves wouldn't jostle his iPhone, which was what he was using to record this.

“You sure?” Jared asked.

The silence was broken by the slap of waves against the hull of the boat and the cries of gulls. A fish breached and slapped back down to the water. The air was heavy with humidity and salt.

Jared regarded him, unspoken questions in his hazel eyes. Misha was back on the Show. Jensen hadn't told anyone except Danneel what he'd risked to make that happen, or even that he'd been involved. That was between himself and God. It was enough that he'd done it, and Misha was back. More importantly, Misha was back with him.

And yet, in October, at the convention in Chicago, when he'd told Misha he loved him, Misha had looked him dead in the eye and said, flat and sincere, “I don't believe you.”

And though it should have, it hadn't hurt. 

Jensen walked from his hotel room, silent, marvelling, because he felt his commitment in his bones, the way he felt it for Dani, the way he felt it for Jared, and it would kill him if either of them ever said that to him. But he understood Misha better than Misha thought he did. Just then, Misha was playing Will without knowing it: he was hurt, fighting, blind to himself. What would've hurt him was if Misha had turned his declaration into a joke, told him to donate to an orphanage, smiled a bright lie with his heart in his throat. As long as Misha cared enough to be honest with him, to not hide from him, Jensen had hope.

While he couldn't tear his feelings out from his marrow and press them into a gem, he could give him this.

So yeah, he was sure.

“Okay,” Jared said. “Rolling.”

Jensen plucked his guitar strings.

V. SEPTEMBER 19th, 2012  
Jensen lingered in his trailer after shooting. His car was still in the lot, so if... anyone... wanted to know if he was still around, well, they'd know. 

“So glad to meet you, Angeles.” 

Four years (and one day, as of fifteen minutes) ago, a guest star named Misha Collins, playing Castiel, a bit character doomed to die as soon as his plot function was fulfilled, walked onto a soundstage, blinking against the raining sparks and the explosive sfx rounds buried beneath his trench, and stood in front of Jensen, playing Dean.

Blue eyes. Blue. The color “blue” had wandered around Jensen's head in search of something to connect with.

Already burned by his crush on Jared, Jensen was wary. Even though Misha filled every single bar on his bi-fi, that didn't mean a damned thing. Misha was married. Misha was a guest star. There were a thousand reasons why Misha wouldn't respond to him.

Except that he did. Like a nuclear bomb.

It took months before Jensen admitted to himself that he was lost. That if Misha didn't move in towards him in a scene, he did it himself. He was addicted to the heat between them, sought it out like a moth. Couldn't stay away from him off stage, either—first, like an agent studying extraterrestrial life, but later, like a meteor, burning because gravity.

Season five, Misha still on the damned Show, he lost it. There was no other way to put it. Before the season even started, one night, desperate, he went to his knees before Danneel, explaining, pleading, begging her to understand. He gave her the opportunity to walk away from him, he really did. Danneel knew all about his sexuality, but she hadn't known about the desire for this one man that had grown like ivy all through the mortar of him, pulling him apart.

He was going to Hell for it, but he had to tell her how he was incomplete. He had to admit she was not enough. No matter how much he loved her, how much he wanted her, when he was buried inside her, sometimes he thought about Misha. He told her about his longing, his curiosity. What if this was the only time he ever felt this way? And after he'd said all these horrible things, he bowed his head in silence, waiting for the guillotine to fall.

She touched his chin.

She tipped his head up.

She met his eyes, her own serious, steady.

And this is what she said: “I know who I am. I know who you are, and I know who he is. Listen to me, Jen: I am not threatened.”

So he married her.

“So glad to meet you, Angeles.”

The season four wrap party got out of hand, and it was Jared's fault, as it almost always was; he liked to be drunk, and he liked his friends drunk with him. This was before Jensen went onto his knees before the woman who was his best friend and lover, but after he'd acknowledged that the tension between himself and Misha wasn't going away. So, not the most comfortable moment.

Jared had Genevieve pressed in a corner, seducing her. Successfully, so far as Jensen could tell, and good for him. He'd marked Genevieve as his from their first scene together, and Jensen approved.

Which left him to wrangle Misha, the space alien who'd invaded their set.

Jared had put on music. Something low and throbbing and apt enough for what he meant to do with Gen later, but kind of unfair to Jensen right now.

The dimmed, gelled light turned the others in the room into fish swimming in murky waters, distant and uninvolved. These were all Jensen's friends. Not one face he didn't trust. So when he turned towards Misha, sitting beside him on the distressed leather loveseat, he wasn't scared. He felt safe. And a little buzzed, but that wasn't a big deal. He hadn't been drinking heavily. He was in control.

He felt Misha's presence as heat all down his side, as though a secret sun shone only on him. Misha's eyes, widening a little as they met his, the pupils blown til they swallowed the blue, sent the heat from that sun into his stomach. He turned towards Jensen and angled his shoulders, walling them off from observers, locking them in a private world. Jensen didn't mind.

When had he stopped minding? Misha had herded him from the moment he walked onto set, separating him from Jared, from everyone, stepping into his space, blocking his path, being underfoot, and at first it had driven him crazy. But soon enough he'd found that two could play that game, and he was bigger, with longer legs, broader shoulders, and if he could rope Jared into the game, so much the better.

This, however, was no game. There was a silence to this moment that reminded Jensen, uncomfortable as the thought was, of the silence inside a church. For all the music and the conversation and the laughter around them, there was only the two of them and their breathing and some things that needed to be said. 

Now the game was, who would speak first.

Misha's hand brushed his thigh. Just the backs of his fingers, his wedding ring spinning loose, but Jensen's skin burned in the touch's wake. So he touched Misha's arm with the tips of his fingers, pressing a little so Mish would feel it through the thick fabric of yet another of his stupid garish sweaters, trailing down his arm until his fingertips traced Misha's, pressed against the sofa cushion.

They touched like that until the lights came up and the few people still standing rattled their keys. They kept drinking, and touching, and around the fifth drink they started stroking one another's face, Jensen's fingertips reading the sharp blades of Misha's cheekbones, Misha's fingers skittering over his mouth as though afraid that mouth would open and tell him he wasn't allowed. Jensen parted his lips on one of those passes so the tip of his tongue pressed against Misha's middle finger, and he didn't miss the other man's start of surprise when he did. 

He'd never been more turned on in his life, his dick painfully swollen against the restraining denim of his jeans, his stomach cramped with desire. 

At the same time, it was tender, the way an injury is tender. Misha was trying to tell him something with all these gentle passes of his fingers, something Jensen wasn't quite getting. At the same time, every secret he kept out of shame or worry pressed against his lips like a mouthful of moths, beating their wings, needing to escape.

Three days later, when he finally went back home, he confessed everything to Dani.

“So glad to meet you, Angeles.”

“You never wanted to record anything before,” Steve said, raising an eyebrow.

Jensen's fans would buy his stool if he packed it inside Vegemite bottles, and they'd still smear it on their toast. He didn't want to demean the efforts of friends, true musicians, struggling and starving and dying inside a business that ran on faces and marketability. 

“This is important,” he said, maybe too urgently, because Steve startled. “Sorry. But it is. I want to release this one track. Can you help me?”

“Sure, bud,” Steve said. 

There was a knock on his door.


End file.
